[tarakat]

The anti-circumvention provision is one of the worst laws out there. It elevates manufacturers into law-makers. Anything that was legal can be made illegal by virtue of a lock. Even a lock placed on our own property by someone else.

How long until we are forced back to the stone age if we want to keep our rights?

[leereeves]

Indeed, for example, it's the anti-circumvention provision that allows John Deere to prevent farmers from repairing their own tractors.

[antiterra]

Mostly true, but John Deere is currently not able to prevent farmers from repairing their own tractors, per the exemption granted to the Librarian of Congress. This exemption must be actively petitioned for renewal every three years.

[leereeves]

Thank you, I'd forgotten about that.

[tarakat]

A brilliant way to let off some steam, while making it impossible to build any sort of business around circumvention (and hence funneling enough resources into circumvention to make it viable and widespread), because there's a ~50% chance every 3 years that your business is made illegal.

[antiterra]

Yeah, their choice not to oppose was definitely meant to defuse the gathering momentum for affirmative right to repair laws.

[ascagnel_]

Anti-circumvention also allows for effectively unlimited copyright: if the owner doesn't make a copy available without DRM, then there will never be a copy legally suited for long-term archival.

[mindslight]

IMO the rightsholder of a a creative work publishing the work with digital restrictions should make it ineligible for copyright protection, as the requisite equity that justifies copyright protection has not been met - the published work won't eventually become part of the public domain. This should also include any restrictive transformation of a creative work (eg compiling source->binary) unless the original creative work has been published or escrowed.

Also, copyright should be limited to a maximum of 10-20 years. Of course these things will never happen politically, so pirate away. The real problems highlighted by the youtube-dl saga are the general reliance on centralized Github and the fact that most users' access to computing is mediated by centrally-controlled apps.

[EMIRELADERO]

I recommend taking a look at the Green v. DOJ case. The EFF is suing the government to have the law declared unconstitutional.